Ed Macy - Hellfire

Travelling in heavily armed WMIK Land Rovers with Pinzgauer 4x4 trucks as support, the Pathfinders put in long-range patrols across the province. They were attacked almost immediately by Taliban, and engaged in virtually continuous combat for the rest of their tour. By the time they left the province, the 3 Para battlegroup had suffered the loss of fourteen soldiers, one interpreter and another forty-six badly injured.

In June, US forces moved out of Musa Qa’leh and the Pathfinders, who had already spent some days in the town, were ordered to relieve them. What was meant to be a six-day occupation until relief by A Company 3 Para turned into a six-week nightmare.

The compound they shared with local police came under daily attack from small arms, machine guns, snipers, RPGs, mortars and a sangar-busting 82 mm recoilless rifle. A Company were ordered to hold Sangin and CO 3 Para informed the Pathfinders that he did not have the resources to relieve them.

Living conditions were grim, with dust, temperatures of nearly 50°C, and dwindling supplies of food and water. Even the rules of engagement were against them. They were prevented from firing until they had physically seen a weapon being raised against them. To make matters worse, some of the ANA and ANP they were working with were either high on drugs or tipped off the Taliban, the Americans had a habit of carrying out operations they didn’t tell their allies about, and directives kept coming back from the top brass in Northwood that they were using too much ammunition.

The Pathfinders must have thought we were on a bungee cord. I lost count of the number of times I’d been crashed out to Musa Qa’leh. I had every firing point committed to memory and knew the place as intimately as Crossmaglen. The fighting was just as ferocious as at Now Zad and Sangin but luckily for the Pathfinders, they never had that many serious injuries; lucky, because it was impossible to get in and out safely by air.

One Chinook trying to pull out injured lads was shot up four times and the crew had to go back for another bird. It was so dangerous the lads were told to ration themselves because they would not be resupplied by air.

Finally, after over a month and an average weight loss of a stone each, they were reinforced by a bunch of Danes in armoured vehicles. The Danes took five days to get into the town because of the tenacious resistance of the Taliban. Unfortunately, the Norsemen brought a new problem with them. Once they were in they couldn’t get out, and they began to eat the Pathfinders out of house and home.

A huge operation to resupply Sangin and to build up its defences was mounted by 3 Para. Once this was complete all efforts were directed towards pulling out the now emaciated Pathfinder Platoon and replacing them with two platoons of Royal Irish.

Yesterday that mission failed badly.

We lost three soldiers trying. Musa Qa’leh has a high concentration of Taliban and a long Green Zone in which they could move virtually at will. It was in the Green Zone that the Taliban ambushed the armoured recce cars, killing a JTAC and two members of the Household Cavalry. We flew our arses off in support of the beleaguered troops. Jon and I had to swap aircraft because we had flown the arse off the one we started in.

After firing the Hellfire just over two weeks ago, we were sent to KAF for three days to sort out the broken aircraft. The technicians worked us hard at KAF. The Apaches were getting a bit ragged and the techs needed us to test them morning, noon and night. It wasn’t without risk either.

We had a four-hour lull late one night and decided to go for a pizza instead of having a late dinner at the all-night American Dining Facility (Dfac). We stood outside the arctic-trailer that was Pizza Hut on the boardwalk – a large wooden walkway with trailers scattered around it acting as shops.

The place was mobbed with soldiers of every nation. Weapons were being handed over to each other so photographs could be taken – this is me with an Armalite – and it all seemed a bit surreal.

‘It’s like leaving the jungle in Nam and going to Hanoi on R&R,’ Jake said as he waited to be served. As he did so I heard something that reminded me of my days as a paratrooper in remote outposts of Northern Ireland. It came very quickly and the pitch change made me squat before throwing myself under the Pizza Hut trailer.

‘Hey dude, it’s not—’ Jake was cut off mid-sentence as I covered my head in the foetal position.

There was a huge crash followed by two more in rapid succession only a couple of hundred metres away.

I crawled to the edge of the trailer and as I started to get up everyone else was diving for cover.

‘I think you’ve got it the wrong way around, lads,’ I laughed. ‘You’re supposed to take cover before the rockets hit.’

The sirens sounded and everyone ran off to the air-raid shelters. To me it was all a bit too late really. I was left alone except for a shadowy figure about fifty metres away, sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette.

‘Nice Para-roll, crap-hat,’ he shouted.

When I moved closer I realised he was an ex-Para mate now working for the boys in black.

We shot the shit for thirty minutes until the sirens sounded the all clear. We’d missed our pizza but I felt lucky that the three Chinese 107 mm rockets had missed me. Not by far, but they had; they’d landed in the Dfac a couple of hundred metres away, killing and injuring late diners.

On our return to Bastion we flew relentlessly every single day and I was feeling physically and emotionally drained.

Colonel Wild came out to visit us and was shocked by what he saw. I’d flown for him when he was a major in charge of AAC’s Special Forces Squadron. We knew each other well and he couldn’t get over how haggard and old I looked.

He made direct references to the fact we were killing – within the ROE – without blinking an eye, and treated death and destruction as a part of daily life. What shocked him most was the level of stress we were experiencing, from ROE to shooting far too close to our own troops to being shot at and shot up. ‘At times you have to play God,’ he said – a very poignant statement from a dedicated practising Christian.

This leap into attack aviation took a lot of the top brass by surprise. I don’t know what they thought Apaches did, but Billy’s account of his introduction to the US Apache course should have been shared with the army’s high rankers: ‘If anyone here doesn’t think they can look a man in the eye and kill him stone cold dead, then he’d better get up and leave. This course is for attack pilots.’

Wild had come out to explain the factors that were causing more and more battlefield helicopters to crash every year. He went home with a brand new agenda: to brief the AAC, JHC and MoD on how kinetic, fluid, ferocious and tiring being an Apache pilot was in the Helmand.

It didn’t pay to think about the sleepless nights, or being crashed out to platoon house after platoon house, or the stifling heat of the tents. I was never one for counting down the days; that only made the tour seem longer. I threw myself into paperwork and kept myself busy unless there was something more interesting to do, like a good old knees-up.

WEDNESDAY, 2 AUGUST 2006

Camp Bastion

We held a ceremony to claim ownership of the flight lines. We christened it Chinthe Lines after the squadron symbol on our flying badges, the lion-like creature that often guarded the entrance to holy places in South-east Asia. In local mythology, chinthes almost always travelled in pairs, and served to protect the pagoda or temple.

After curry, poppadums and soft drinks, the youngest air trooper in the squadron, Emily Leggett, was to unveil the sign. All the boys sang the theme to The Stripper as she unwrapped the plaque in a fit of giggles.